Nintendo shouldn’t be able to patent game mechanics
Those are patents, not copyrights. There are a bunch of different forms of intellectual property. Of the top of my head:
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Copyright
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Trademark
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Patent
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Moral (not very substantial in the US, but more-meaningful in France)
SabinStargem@lemmy.today 21 hours ago
IMO, the way it should be is that concepts and art should be free to be used by anyone. However, specific incarnations made someone can’t be copied. For example, Nintendo can make a Pokemon game, as can Sega with the same characters. Naturally, Nintendo can make a Shin Megami Mario game.
The important thing is that the company or people behind an incarnation is distinctly labelled, so that people can’t confuse who made what. In this way, variants of a media can fulfill niches that otherwise wouldn’t be possible. Say, for example, a WoodRocket “Jessie Does James” hentai anime.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
It should fall under more general laws against fraud. The main harm in copyright violation is copying something and claiming to be the original author, thereby stealing credit for it. If a reasonable person would mistake your product as coming from the original source, then you have committed fraud and should be held liable for damages.
However, if you make a spinoff and it’s obviously distinct such that a reasonable person wouldn’t mistake your work as coming from the original creator, that should be protected.
So yeah, if I want to make a Pokemon game and it is very distinct from anything The Pokemon Company has worked on (either directly or indirectly), then it should be totally fine. The only copyright violation is if I directly copy any artwork, but if I produce my own renditions, I should be in the clear.
3abas@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Once you start studying non capitalist propaganda, the idea of “intellectual property” becomes transparently harmful. Copyrights don’t protect ideas, they protect the wealth of rich people.
hayvan@feddit.nl 16 hours ago
Indeed. I’m not against copyrights owned by individuals. Corporations owning rights is downright dystopian.
Njos2SQEZtPVRhH@piefed.social 15 hours ago
So, we can use Donald Duck, but not Harry Potter? I don’t quite understand why. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to write my own Harry Potter books? (not that I would).
Womble@piefed.world 15 hours ago
I'm not even sure that IP being owned by non-natural persons is the problem, for example I could see a coop collectively owning copyrights/patents relevant to their work. The problem is the frankly ridiculous amount of time granted for copyrights and obvious methods being patented.
Change both of those and you keep the benefit of innovative individuals/small groups having legal protection from large corporations muscling in and stealing their work and get rid of most of the damage done by the current system.
tal@lemmy.today 21 hours ago
I have, in the past, kind of wished that settings and characters could not be copyrighted. I realize that there’s work that goes into creating each, but I think that we could still live in a world where those weren’t protected and interesting stuff still gets created. If that were to happen, then I agree, it’d be necessary to make it very clear who created what, since the setting and characters alone wouldn’t uniquely identify the source.
Like, there are things like Greek mythology or the Robin Hood collection of stories, very important works of art from our past, that were created by many different unaffiliated people. They just couldn’t be created today with our modern stories, because the settings and characters would be copyrighted and most rightsholders don’t just offer a blanket grant of rights to use them.
That’s actually one unusual and notable thing H.P. Lovecraft did — if you’ve ever seen stuff in the Cthulhu Mythos, that’s him. He encouraged anyone who wanted to do so to create stuff using his universe. One reason why we have that kind of collection of Lovecraftian stuff.
But you can’t do that with, say, Star Wars or a lot of other beloved settings.
SabinStargem@lemmy.today 19 hours ago
The Touhou franchise strikes me as the modern Lovecraft. People are creating fangames, and go on to make them into commercial products. Around the 22nd or thereabout, “Shrine Maiden Wars” will be released, which is a take on the Super Robot Wars formula, but with the Touhou cast. It is an incredibly vibrant ecosystem of fanworks, where most people get to have fun AND profit.
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Sebastrion@leminal.space 19 hours ago
Touhou Luna Nights Is such a Fun Game! It was the first Touhou Game I played because I’m don’t like Bullet Hell’s. If someone reads this and is into Metroidvanias, give it a shot!